Lemon, cigarettes and sadness
by kobein
Summary: "She enters the classroom a few minutes late, messy-haired, uncaring and utterly, tragically gorgeous." Percy meets Annabeth, and they are each other's exception. AU


She enters the classroom a few minutes late, messy-haired, uncaring and utterly, tragically gorgeous. The teacher presents her to the class; "this is Annabeth, she's from California. Please make her feel welcomed."

She sits beside him, rhythmically tapping her ringed fingers on her desk. She smells like lemon, cigarettes and sadness, and gods she is beautiful.

He stares at her until the bell rings, not daring to say a word to her. She's way out of his league, anyway.

_Line break_

He's not the only one staring, he realizes. He can literally feel her intense gaze burning through his skin and seizing his soul. After a few minutes of feeling like she was investigating the depths of his mind, he gathers every ounce of his (almost inexistent, he must admit) bravery and manages to blurt out: "You're staring." She responds with an amused and confident: "I was only staring 'cause you were staring first, seaweed brain." "Whatever you say, wise girl, I know you just can't resist me." , he replies. Flirting was completely new to him but, he thinks, he likes it well enough. He's too busy listening at her smoky voice making a witty remark to notice the fist-shaped bruise that makes its way across the exposed skin of her thigh.

_Line break_

Slowly, day by day, he gets to know her. She's from cali, she moved in an apartment not far from the supermarket, with her dad and stepmother. She's all one-sided smirks, odd-colored bic lighters and flirtatious "Gods Percy, how can you suck so much at pre calc?" (Okay, maybe it's not as flirtatious as he would like it to be). They hang out together after every excruciating days of class (actually, "hanging out" is more like: she smokes and he watches intensely at the way her red lips part to blow out smoke as grey as her eyes, none of them uttering a word. It's like a ritual, she frequently tells him as they part.) Both of them don't have any friends, he being totally uninterested in having any (except her, of course), and she simply being too moody, too intimidating and, perhaps, too beautiful (if there is such a thing as being "too beautiful") to possess any friends (except him, of course). "We're each other's exceptions", she whispers to him one day, simultaneously making shivers run up and down his spine.

_Line break_

One day, he notices it. A purple-greenish bruise that runs along her slender wrist. He asks her about it. She replies with a stern, unemotional and brutally honest: "my dad hits me." She runs a surprisingly shaky hand through her mass of disheveled blond locks.

"Why?" He says after a while, startled, but not entirely surprised (after all, she could not have been that fucked up, that moody without something, anything going on with her). "He says I'm useless. Maybe he's right." And she lets out a laugh so wickedly sad it makes him flinch and close his green eyes. And maybe it's because he wants to prove her that she's far from useless, maybe it's because she makes him crazy when she lazily runs her fingers on his collarbone , maybe there simply is no reason, but he kissed her lips, his tongue violently crashing against her teeth.

_Line break_

They do not talk about her father nor about the kiss for quite a while. Actually, they make it an unwritten rule to avoid those topics. They grow close, going as far as seeing each other regularly, at least four times a week. She never invites him at her place, though, and always ends up at his. (Strange girl, his mom says after she leaves. Strange eyes, too.)

One night, everything changes. He hears someone frantically knocking at his door and there she is, all bruised and shaky. She manages a weak "Percy" before tears overflow and heart wrenching sobs make their way through her throat. He's never seen her cry, and the sight of her emotional distress hits him in the guts, hard. He lets her in, makes her sit on the couch as she keeps on crying, not knowing what to say or what to do. He is alarmed when he notices the amount of bruises that paints her body multiple shades of deep violet. He speaks up; "Tell me what happened. Please, tell me what I can do." She responds in a pathetically trembling voice; "I dropped a plate and he lost it. Gods, he was so mad. Can you just let me stay here tonight?" After which he replies with a simple, but honest "Of course. You'll always be able to stay here." The rest of the night is mostly silent as he holds her through her endless shaking and tries to reduce the swelling on her cheekbones by applying ice on the hand-shaped mark. When her sobs slow down and her breathing evens out, he says: "You deserve so much better Annabeth. Gods, don't ever ever think you deserve this". "Kiss me" is her only answer. He obeys.

_Line break_

A few weeks later, she still shows off to school with lilac bruises and still smokes cigarettes like they are the only way to keep her from insanity. (Even if, he thinks, she is already quite insane). But now, she has his lips to kiss, his hand to hold, his arms to run into and somewhat, she says to him one day, it makes it all okay.

**Author note**: This is my first fanfiction, don't judge me too fast! Constructive criticism only, please. Also, English isn't my first language, so forgive me if I made any mistakes! J


End file.
